Israeli App to Detect Fake Facebook Accounts Catches People’s Fancy

Created: 26 February 2014

Tel Aviv, Israel, February 26, 2014 -- Eliran Shachar the creator of FakeOFF the wonder app that detects fake friends on Facebook, thereby preventing a number of scams being perpetrated by so called friends on unsuspecting people, can’t stop smiling. This is because there is a tremendous curiosity and buzz around FakeOFF. Says Eliran, “Though we haven’t formally advertised or made any great effort to popularize FakeOFF in the Indian market, we are inundated by queries. So far we have received more than 90,000 inquiries of which 80% have downloaded the app. Going forward we expect 400,000 Indians to download this app.”

Already trending quite steadily in the online space, the popularity of FakeOFF among Indian users of Facebook is not only a testimony to the growing influence of social media by large sections of Indian people, but also the dangers posed by it. According to Eliran, “Recent statistics show that at least 10 per cent of about 1.35 billion Facebook users are not authentic. Besides, there are millions of users who create fake identities and appear as regular users. FakeOff app uses a sophisticated algorithm to investigate the behaviour of suspect 'friends' and rank them according to 1-10 credibility score. It scans up to 365 days of timeline activity for every suspect Facebook friend and checks for abnormal activity”

Interestingly according to latest statistics, about 14.3 crore(143 million) accounts on the social networking site may be false or duplicates, with a major chunk of them coming from developing markets like India and Turkey. Clearly the time has come for the users of Facebook in India, that comprise of students, youngsters, working people and corporates to pay attention to the threat posed to them by cyber crime, which is becoming increasingly menacing. Apps like FakeOFF are an important step towards making oneself secure online.